Does anybody have first hand experience with using a USB Wifi Adapter with an M2 Macbook Air? If so, can you tell me what you bought and any extra drivers that you had to install?

From Googling, I have found things that might work. However, i'd like to invest in something that will work. Or at least have a high probability of working.

Thanks.

I popped off a key to clean off some debris and now i cannot place it back in. It snaps into place but there’s no pop up and stays stuck inside. I don’t have an apple authorised store near me for the next couple of weeks.

What should I do next? </3

That’s subtleties - autocorrect strikes again

I spent a long time trying to figure out why Safari wouldn’t start up with the tabs I had open when I closed it. All the website searching showed the same settings that weren’t working for me. Finally one site also had the line, “be sure you close the app properly using command q”. I had been right clicking the icon and selecting quit there. So is the right click not a proper way to quit an app? I’d rather red x the app, then shut down the Mac, but that does the same as right click quit.
Although I had to rant a little, the real question is how are you supposed to learn stuff like this other than trial and error? Knowing that 2 ways to quit produce different results is not intuitive.

Edit: I did know the red x didn’t quit the program. The dot under the icon made it obvious that the program was still running, which is how I found the right click quit option.
Edit 2: but apparently I didn’t understand that it did close the window.

I’m rearranging which computer and display is where at home and want to place a Studio Display XDR with nano texture in a room that’s next to my kitchen, and there’s an open doorway to the kitchen without a closeable door.

Is this going to be a problem with the nano texture? Will it accumulate tiny bits of grease from cooking some food that involves a bit of olive oil or similar on a pan? Will the famous official cleaning cloth still be able to clean it? Do I need to add a curtain or something to the doorway?

I have had a different monitor that has a traditional matte finish in the same place for a couple of years, and it has not become greasy.

The monitor is going to to be 240 cm away from the doorway, then 20 cm of wall thickness, and the stove is 180 cm away from the doorway in the other direction, so 440 cm between the stove and the display. The airflow design is such that air enters the apartment via the room with the display and exits via the kitchen, but the flow isn’t particularly strong, and cooking can be observable in the air outside the kitchen.

I have a 13 inch M2 MacBook Pro with 16gb of ram that works great for my use case. I love AppleCare+ and have used it multiple times to replace broken iPhones and iPads. My rule is that my primary use iPhone/iPad/Mac needs to be under AppleCare+ so I can get rapid replacements if needed. I currently have this MacBook covered under AppleCare+ - approximately when will it not be eligible for AppleCare+ hardware replacement anymore (the M2 13 inch MacBook Pro was released in 2022)? Knowing that will help me plan when I need to purchase a new MacBook.

I encountered this on a local business' website today. The terminal command it provides appears to be base64 encoded to obfuscate it. Anybody experienced anything like this? Googling for this shows nothing.

EDIT: As people in the comments point out, it's a variation of the ClickLock malware. It doesn't appear to be the main version, though. This is modified.

I investigated it a little.

1. The command is base64 encrypted, and when unencrypted, it tells Terminal to download a shell script from a compromised website.

2. That shell script is also base64 encrypted. When unencrypted, it installs a launchctl shell script and has another load of base64 crap.

3. When that's unencrypted, it's tries to run an AppleScript -- which is again obfuscated by referencing every letter as "(ASCII character 46) & (ASCII character 112)" etc. I asked Claude to figure this out (I lack the skills to create something like a Perl or Python script to do so), and Claude said it was a blockchain-hosted C2 (EtherHiding) feeding a macOS osascript dropper -- so this component also would download presumably the payload components.

That's as far as I got. This is as close as any malware as I'd like to get, and I feel a little dirty. I already use apps like KnockKnock to monitor persistence locations, but I'm giving my Mac a good sweep now just to make sure everything's OK.

hello! i’ve never owned a macbook before and have had a shitty acer chromebook for years, but now since i am trying to join an undergraduate PA program, id like to upgrade and be prepared. i was looking into the new macbook neos, but ive been reading that they’re not the best at multitasking and the airs might be better, but i have no idea. so which is the cheapest, but good quality option for a medical college student?? id like to not spend over $700, if possible. maybe looking into refurbished macbooks is the best decision? i’m not sure.. pls help!

I'm purchasing a new Mac this year and have my sights set on a Mac Studio. I'm curious, though: do y'all ever use the SD card slot? If so, are you using it for something other than transferring files from a camera?

this issue came up out of nowhere. I used to have a USB-C charger but the cord got torn up over the years, so I switched back to the actual charger that came with my 2021 Macbook Pro. It snaps into the macbook like normal, but the problem is that the LED light is orange (Not Flashing). It doesn’t change to green and it’s not charging my laptop at all, what is the issue?? The cord isn’t broken and I checked every outlet to make sure its not a laptop issue, but it feels like it is because I never had this issue charging before. Now its stuck at orange color while my laptop slowly dies (I need it for work). Let me know it any of you guys have a solution to this.
I wanna show pics of the issue but i guess this sub doesn’t allow Mac pics … even if its for an issue 😐

I am a regular user of Windows and Mac. The one feature that I miss in Mac is the alt+tab navigation of windows. The closest is using 3 fingers and sliding up to view and select a window. But I find this tedious and slower compared to the Windows navigation - as I lose my current window too. Also, if there are multiple Word docs open/ or multiple instances of any app, I have to scroll right using 2 fingers to find the one that’s open. Command + ‘(backtick) - displays only the open apps. Any suggestions to make the navigation easier?

What i already tried:

1. Restarted the mac
2. Reinstalled the Tahoe from recovery mode

3. Delete ~/Library/Preferences

4. Created another user account (through terminal) and still cannot access the system preferences on different account too

Ever since i added a website to my dock to convert into Webapp the webapp asked me for mic permission again which i denied previously but when i clicked on open system preference option to manually allow the mic its showing like this and i cannot search or access anything for the past 3 days

I have heard macbooks last more than decades functioning properly in terms of everything performance, battery life and other.
But it does not seem it will be true in my case, I have bought my mac in 2020 been using it since. But i have to repair it twice in the mean time and i seems i need to repair it again.
First time, i was using it normally and it turned black screen, i have taken it to repair center, they repaired it, they told it was due to dust in hinge, the flex gate was damaged. After since i was cleaning hinge every week.
Second time, i kept it in shut down for around 10 days, i was out of the city. When i came back it didn't turned on. Went for repair, but repair guy can't figured it out exactly which ic is damaged, and moved everything in the board, but luckily another guy came and he fixed it.
Now, this time when i pull ma display above 80 degree the display is showing lines, but if i close the lid and open it around 80 degree it works perfectly fine.

I use it with care, I never dropped it. How do you guys keep your laptop perfect for so long like 10 years or more?

So, i am thinking possibly it will mess up in future after repair too. And i was thinking of selling it, around $350 and switch to macbook air m5?
What do you suggest, should i stick with this mac till it dies or sell this and take new one?

Hey folks! It's my first time around here as I have been a lifetime windows user and I have finally given up on windows and am looking to switch to a macbook.

Deals I am getting.

1. MacBook Air M5 24GB 1TB in midnight colour at ₹182k ($1886). This includes 3 years of AC+ (Since it's the old MRP stock they won't sell without it).

2. MacBook Pro M5 16GB 1TB in silver colour at ₹205k ($2124). No AC+ here.

My use case.

I am in my second year of MBA in finance. In terms of productivity I don't intend to push it to its limits. But I play games, I know I shouldn't be getting a Mac but I just don't want windows anymore and need something to last me 8-10 years (hopefully). I would play the native titles like Cyberpunk as well as through Crossovers. Will the fan on the pro make a significant difference in gaming?

Also I currently own an Asus laptop with a top end 2k OLED, so the Air display would be a noticeable downgrade.

In my research Air would suffice for me, but would gaming be a better experience on MBP?

Also the midnight colour I've heard is a fingerprint magnet, how difficult is it to manage?

So help me decide please, should I save the money or go for pro?

I’ve been working on a mac dictation app called DictaFlow, so I wanted to test something I wasn’t sure would work well:

Can an 8GB MacBook Neo run useful AI dictation completely locally, without sending audio to the cloud?

The short answer is yes.

Apple lists the MacBook Neo with an A18 Pro chip and 8GB of unified memory:

https://support.apple.com/en-ie/126322

I tested local transcription mode on both the MacBook Neo and an iPhone 12 mini, including with Wi-Fi turned off.

The results were surprisingly good

- The fast local model felt effectively instantaneous after the initial warm-up.

- Dictation continued working with no internet connection.

- The MacBook Neo handled local transcription very comfortably.

- The iPhone 12 mini also performed much better than I expected.

- A Whisper-based local option was slower, but better suited to custom vocabulary, names, accents, and multiple languages.

This obviously isn’t the same thing as running Apple’s entire system-level AI stack. It’s a focused speech-recognition task, with a model compiled and optimized specifically for dictation.

But that’s the interesting part. An 8GB laptop doesn’t automatically mean it is incapable of useful local AI. With the right model, runtime, and workload, the MacBook Neo is a very capable local dictation machine.

The first transcription can take a little longer while the model initializes, so DictaFlow warms the model in the background afterward. Once warm, repeated dictation feels extremely fast.

I’m not claiming this is a formal benchmark yet. These were hands-on development tests rather than a controlled lab study. But the practical result was clear: the MacBook Neo is much more capable for local speech AI than its 8GB specification might suggest.

I’m the developer of DictaFlow, so there’s obviously some bias here, but I thought the result was interesting enough to share. The app has both local/offline and cloud options, but I prefer local!

Just remember that local AI dictation is 100% possible on a lower spec Mac. Don't let anyone else fool you otherwise.

I've had my 14" MBP for 3.5 years now and it's still brilliant. I don't know if Apple realised the M chips perform well for a very long time and result in no need to upgrade lol.

I can't see myself upgrading until the laptop dies, because there is no noticeable performance slow down or degradation in battery life even after 3.5 years

I have the option of buying a 16Gb/256Gb M4 mac mini for around $700 or an M1 Max MBP with 32Gb/1Tb for $850.

Which do I choose?

Edit, thanks for the quick answers, I'm going to go MBP as I think the extra multicore horsepower and storage would be more beneficial for music production over the Mini.

M3 air 16/512
M2 pro 16/512
They are aboat 100 different the expansive is a m3

Lately my M2 Air has been dropping around 8 to 12% overnight even when the lid is closed and I’m not using it. I usually leave it with Safari, Spotify, and a few other apps open, but I never had this much battery drain before.

Battery usage doesn’t show anything obvious, and the Mac doesn’t feel warm when I open it. I’m wondering if something is preventing it from properly going to sleep.

Has anyone else noticed this recently, or is there a setting or background process I should check?

Bought a new MacBook Air M5 on July 18. Today I watched a movie on zee5( ott platform) in Safari for about 5–10 minutes and the Mac got unusually hot. After restarting, the battery instantly dropped from 70% to 60%.

Should I wait and see for few days or should contact service center asap ?

.